Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

Racial biases in academic knowledge

7. August 2019 Philosophy News News
The word of racism evokes individual expressions of racial prejudice or one’s superiority over other races. An outrageous yet archetypical example is found in the recent racist tweets made by the President Donald Trump, attacking four congresswomen of color by suggesting that they go back to the countries where they are originally from if they criticize America. […] The post Racial biases in academic knowledge appeared first on [More]
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Publicly Engaged Philosophy: A Dispatch (guest post by Jennifer Morton)

7. August 2019 Philosophy News News
“What I’m suggesting here is… doing philosophy with the public not just because of what we think we can offer with our expertise, but because of what we think the public can offer philosophy.” The following is a guest post* by Jennifer Morton, associate professor of philosophy at the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Publicly Engaged Philosophy: A Dispatch by Jennifer Morton A few weeks into teaching a philosophy of action course at the City College of New York, one of my students exclaimed in exasperation something along the lines of, “We are just talking about the problems of privileged, white people here!” Several other students concurred. I urged them to say more. The examples, one of them explained, were disconnected from their experience of making choices. She didn’t have a second-order desire that her desire to go to her job as a cashier at Walgreens be effective over her desire to stay in bed in the morning. She had to work. Her job sucked, but she did it. Their critique resonated with me. I too had had the experience of reading philosophy and thinking that it wasn’t about people like me. Now, after years as a professional philosopher with a decent salary, I have come to see more of my life reflected in the literature—decisions about whether to agree to referee a paper or where to go on vacation seem relevant rather than fanciful. But the complaint my student lodged raises a serious worry for our profession. Philosophers tend [More]
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Friedrich Schiller on Beauty and Aesthetics – Philosopher of the Month

7. August 2019 Philosophy News News
German poet and playwright, Friedrich Schiller is considered a profound and influential philosopher. His philosophical-aesthetic writing played an important role in shaping the development of German idealism and Romanticism in one of the most prolific periods of German philosophy and literature. They are primarily concerned with the redemptive value of the arts and beauty in […] The post Friedrich Schiller on Beauty and Aesthetics – Philosopher of the Month appeared first on OUPblog.         Related StoriesHow Germany’s financial collapse led to NazismHow quantitative thinking shaped our worldviewHow the Eurovision Song Contest has been [More]
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The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy

7. August 2019 Philosophy News News
2019.08.07 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews G.W. Leibniz, The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, François Duchesneau and Justin E. H. Smith (eds., trs.), Yale University Press, 2016, lxx + 443pp., $125.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780300161144. Reviewed by Anne-Lise Rey, Université Paris Nanterre This new volume of the Yale Leibniz presents for the first time a full English translation, together with an edition of the Latin text, of the controversy between Leibniz and the physician Georg Ernst Stahl. The volume meets the highest standards of scholarly publishing. Leaving aside the fairly free French nineteenth-century translation by Blondin [Baillière, 1860], long the only guide to Stahl's complicated writing, the exchanges between Leibniz and Stahl have been published in two forms in recent years. The first is the Stahl-Leibniz. Controverse sur la vie, l'organisme et le mixte (Paris: Vrin, 2004), a translation of Leibniz's texts (Animadversiones in G.E. Stahlii Theoriam medicam and Replicatio ad Stahlianas Observationes) by Sarah Carvallo. This translation is preceded by an introduction... Read [More]
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Toni Morrison, whose work enlarged the American imagination in ways we are only beginning to understand, is dead. She was 88… Vinson Cunningham… Dwight Garner… The Paris Review… Washington Post… Hannah Giorgis…

7. August 2019 Philosophy News News
Toni Morrison, whose work enlarged the American imagination in ways we are only beginning to understand, is dead. She was 88… Vinson Cunningham… Dwight Garner… The Paris Review… Washington Post… Hannah [More]
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The Philosophy of Neuroscience

6. August 2019 Philosophy News News
[Revised entry by John Bickle, Peter Mandik, and Anthony Landreth on August 6, 2019. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html] Over the past four decades, philosophy of science has grown increasingly "local". Concerns have switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is one natural result. This emerging area was also spurred by remarkable growth in the neurosciences themselves. Cognitive and computational neuroscience continues to encroach directly on issues traditionally addressed within the humanities, including the nature [More]
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